JTF2’s AMERICAN COUNTERPARTS AT WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

This being the book buying season, I’m going to continue with running a few book reviews on this blog over the next week. Today is a quick look at two books on the U.S. comrades (Green Berets and SOF tac air controllers) of Canada’s Joint Task Force 2.

REVIEWS BY DAVID PUGLIESE

Desperate Lands: The War on Terror Through the Eyes of a Special Forces Soldier by Regulo Zapata Jr.

Paperback: 192 pagesPublisher: Nadores Publishing & Research

Desperate Lands is a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier’s view of various missions he was on while fighting the “war on terror” in the Horn of Africa and in Afghanistan.

The author, Special Forces Master Sergeant Regulo Zapata, Jr. gives us a quick read on the war from his perspective. The African portion of the book is very very brief and most of the action is centered on Afghanistan. Master Sgt. Zapata’s focus is on the early days of that war.

There is not a lot of action-packed in-combat details here; lots of mundane aspects of soldiering in Afghanistan, filling out forms, detailing aircraft manifests, training the Afghan National Army, sitting down for tea with Afghan elders and warlords, a few raids to recover weapons caches and capturing Taliban prisoners. The details on the actions are kept to the minimum, however.

The photos, all black and white are excellent. The problem is that the reproduction quality is not quick up to snuff so they are fuzzy when printed in the book. The book retails for $19.95 (U.S.) so around $23 in Canada. There are probably better ways to spend your money but if you are keenly interested in reading a wide variety of publications on the Afghan war this provides one piece of the puzzle.

Danger Close is heavy on details about the small teams of operators trained in close air support (CAS) and calling in air strikes.

The book covers the use of such individuals during the early days of the Afghanistan war (the fall of the Taliban where close air support played a critical role) and the early days of the Iraq conflict, territory that has been covered elsewhere but not in such detail.

The book also looks at the internal battles/inter-service rivalries in the U.S. military about the profession of tactical air controllers and where they fit into the food chain, which is could be of limited interest to a Canadian audience.

The strength of Danger Close is that the author often quotes Tactical Air Controllers or TACPs at length and verbatim. While this does nothing for the flow of the book, it gives the participants a chance to detail their views straight to the reader.

The book has been a hit among U.S. readers, with one individual involved in the job outlining on Amazon what he liked best about it: the topics covered are the “virtues of Close Air Support, the difference it makes on the battlefield, how TACP’s are often misused by the Army, how reluctant the Army is to use TACP’s, how CAS has saved the Army numerous times, and how TACP’s always improvise and overcome obstacles to do our job. It talks about our fallen brothers and their sacrifices. It addresses the problems within the job and how in the past of TACP’s, we were largely ignored before the war and how the future needs to be better as the battlefield evolves into the Joint atmosphere.”

Unfortunately there are very few photos or maps but overall the book is a welcome addition to one’s military library.

Cheers David PuglieseOttawa Citizen

If you want to view some of David Pugliese’s previous articles from the Ottawa Citizen please go here:

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